Worked up about work

18 March 2011 — 12:00am

Economically, Australia is clearly ahead of countries like Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Brazil. But when it comes to employee engagement, they’re way ahead of us, with a new global survey released this week revealing Aussie workers are among the most dissatisfied in the world.

Corporate research giant Gallup conducted the poll of 47,000 people in more than a hundred countries, 2000 of whom were from Australia. They discovered that 31 per cent of Costa Ricans, 30 per cent of Guatemalans, and 29 per cent of Brazilians are in the highest category of job satisfaction. By comparison, only a dismal 18 percent of Australians can say they love their work.

So, developing countries aside, how do we compare with our more advanced cousins? We’re still behind – but not by as much. Twenty-three per cent of the British and Kiwis are engaged, one in five Canadians are happy with their work, and in the US, surprisingly, 28 per cent of workers experience high rates of job satisfaction. Overall, the global average is 27 per cent.

What’s worse, almost two thirds of Australian employees consider themselves to be emotionally detached from their employer, and so they just do the bare minimum: enough to avoid getting fired, but not so much that it feels like hard work. It’s the case of the classic plodder. Nice to have around, but tough to rely on.

And then, ominously, there are those deemed to be "actively disengaged". These are the people who think bad thoughts – and act on them. They dislike their organisation, hate their boss, are indifferent to their job, but they just won’t leave. Instead, they hang around and spread their negativity to others within the team. In Australia, one in five employees fit that description.

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On the positive side, at least we’re not in Singapore or China. A staggering 98 per cent of employees in those two countries admit they’re disengaged with their work, preferring to be doing something else somewhere else.

The whole concept of staff engagement is one of those fluffy HR subjects that makes many managers shrug their shoulders with apathy. Its softness as a workplace theory disguises some hard quantitative results. For example, the Gallup survey showed that a third of employees with low levels of engagement had chucked a sickie during the previous month, whereas only 11 per cent of engaged employees had done the same thing. That means disengaged workers are three times more likely to call in sick, and chances are they’re not even sick.

The cost of absenteeism is more than just the payment made to employees who don’t turn up for work. There are other expenses that accumulate too, such as missed opportunities, reduced productivity, and the impact of stress on colleagues who are forced to pick up the slack. According to a study by the University of Western Australia, absenteeism costs the private sector $2 billion in lost productivity a year. In the public sector, it’s $5 billion.

If you’re still skeptical about the benefits of having an engaged workforce, here’s one more statistic. Gallup's figures show that organisations with staff engagement in the top quartile had growth in earnings per share that was more than four times higher than their competitors’ median. It's evident that having happy staff is good for business, and the data shows it matters a lot.

There were some common elements the researchers found among employees who declared they were highly engaged. These included:

Engaged workers were more likely to say their organisation is hiring and expanding its workforce

Engaged workers were more likely to rate their personal life favourably

Almost all engaged employees said they were treated with respect "all day yesterday", and were less likely to have experienced anger or stress

Those with good physical health reported higher engagement than those with health problems

In the meantime, most Australian employees are reluctantly dragging themselves to work, unmotivated and disengaged. But as Sir Walter Raleigh (an English writer and explorer) wrote several centuries ago: "The employer generally gets the employees he deserves." He was eventually beheaded.